But still, these are billion-dollar markets with giant personalities and egos involved. And every once in a while, this buttoned-down corner of technology lets the smack talk fly. Or something resembling it.

It will be no surprise that in this case Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle (ORCL), is involved. Early last year, Ellison sounded off about rival's SAP plans to build technology to compete with Oracle's bread-and-butter database product.

"When SAP and, specifically Hasso Plattner, said they're going to build this in-memory database and compete with Oracle, I said, 'God, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs,'" Ellison said.

Plattner, SAP's co-founder, was in Palo Alto on Thursday as part of a media event the company held to announce the official release of the product in question, dubbed SAP HANA. (HANA is short for HAsso's New Architecture.) SAP says it will allow customers to run its various software without the need for Oracle's database.

An audience member asked Plattner about Ellison's provocative remarks. Plattner smiled and said:

"I don't do what Larry does, I stick to technology and facts. I enjoy that he is not smiling."